The issue of whether the Fed can really refuse to accept and credit a deposit of a platinum coin with its face value, is being raised frequently on blog posts about Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS) and the Trillion Dollar Coin (TDC). In the past, I've argued that the Fed cannot; and the final decision on taking the TDC off the table was actually made by the President, and not by Chairman Bernanke.

(Editor's Note: This post is being re-published with the permission of the author, Scott Fullwiler)

Cullen Roche’s excellent post at Pragmatic Capitalism explains—via comments from frequent MMT commentator Beowulf and several previous posts by fellow MMT blogger Joe Firestone (see the links at the end of Cullen’s post and also here)—that the debt ceiling debate could be ended right now given that the US Constitution bestows upon the US Treasury the authority to mint coins. Further, this simple change would lift the veil on how current monetary operations work and thereby demonstrate clearly that a currency-issuing government under flexible exchange rates cannot be forced into default against its will and is not beholden to “vigilante” bond markets. As Beowulf explains in a later comment, “The anomaly it addresses is that the US Govt has a debt limit yet an agency of the US Govt (the Federal Reserve) does not have a debt limit. Clearly this is a structural defect.”

Earlier this month, Thomas Geoghegan wrote a piece for The Nation telling the Democrats the ten things they could do to really get the base excited, and at the same time do good things for the country. Here's his list.

1. Raise Social Security to 50 percent of working income.

2. Let's extend Medicare to people 55 to 65.

3. Make it a civil right to join, or not to join, a labor union.

4. Put in a usury cap of 16 percent.

5. Set up small government banks like the German Sparkasse.

6. Give everyone the right to six days of vacation -- six consecutive paid working days.

This is Part Two of a critical review of The National Journal's Debate on "Our Fiscal Future" between John Podesta and Douglas Holtz-Eakin with Jim Tankersley moderating, at The George Washington University's Jack Morton Auditorium. This part provides more observations and evaluation on some of the propositions offered by Holtz-Eakin and Podesta.

Besides Yellen, who would be vice chairman replacing outgoing No. 2 Donald Kohn, Obama will tap Sarah Raskin, a top banking supervisor for the state of Maryland, and economist Peter Diamond, who has written extensively about the government-run Social Security program, to fill Fed vacancies.

Bernie Sanders has used a bit of Senate finesse to block the renomination of Ben Bernanke to head the Federal Reserve. Chris Bowers over at Closed Left explains what's happening, but what it all boils down to is that Sanders has managed to hold up the renomination of one of Bush's creatures to a hugely important office. Obama and Wall Street want Bernanke to stay and keep fucking up the economy. Sanders is looking like one of the only senators willing to go on record and try to stop this from happening. Read more about Tell Bernie Sanders, "thanks for looking out!"

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